


History Has Its Eyes On You

by SomethingProfound



Category: Mass Effect - All Media Types, Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: 100 Drabble Challenge, Drabble Collection, F/F, M/M, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Ruthless (Mass Effect), Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), minor mention of suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-01-06 13:41:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 3,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18389555
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SomethingProfound/pseuds/SomethingProfound
Summary: “I wish it need not have happened in my time.""So do I and so do all who live to see such times. But that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given us.”Ten characters, a hundred one hundred word drabbles.





	1. Emilia Shepard - Atonement

**1\. Sacrifice**

A platoon for a city: it's all just numbers. She makes the calculation with a gun in hand and a flak jacket over her tshirt. She buys time with her friends. She trades them to a grenade. She trades them to a sniper round through the stomach. She trades them, one by one, until there is only her own life left to bargain.

She trades that too, with bodies beneath her feet and her gun half melted in her hand. But the difference is: she wakes up.

They give her a medal. She shoves it in a drawer, until Alchera.

 

**2\. Intimacy**

Ashley Williams kisses like she fights - all direct passion and controlled aggression. Her mouth is hard and warm, and she likes to fist her hand in Shepard’s dark hair, tug just enough that she bares her throat for her. Ashley Williams kisses like she makes love - with a hint of tenderness that makes Shepard’s knees a little weak, makes her breath catch in her throat.

They strip each other of the hardness they have learnt to survive, seek out the soft places beneath with hands calloused by guns and violence. War has sculpted them, but that’s not everything they are.

 

**3\. Tattoo**

She winces as the gun traces black across her shoulder blade. The other Marines laugh amongst themselves, throwing around jokes and teasing words. Some of them reminisce about the moment that has brought them here.

The moment in which Private First Class Shepard propelled a pirate into a wall so hard his helmet caved in.

When the tattoo artist is done, her squad leader pulls her to his feet and grins. “You’re a real Marine now, Shepard.”

The year is 2173. It’s the first blood on her hands, and the first tattoo on her skin, but far from the last.

 

** 4\. Mother **

Hannah Shepard hadn't ever thought about being a mother until she married Isabel Alves. Until one day Isabel smiled at a baby and the sunlight glanced off the dark of her cheek and Hannah thought _oh._ That's that then.

But now her daughter is screaming, flailing little fists, and give Hannah a fighter and its controls, a squadron to command and she'd feel less helpless than this. She's read ten parenting books, but reading doesn't make up for what she lacks. Isabel was meant to be here.

Izzy would know what to do, and God, Emilia looks just like her.

 

** 5\. Offbeat **

Talking to Ash used to be like breathing. Easy, automatic, didn't need much active thought. She made a fool of herself sometimes - god, that awful baggage metaphor - but that was okay too. Now she feels like the space between them is filling up with the things she wants to say but can't put into words.

Stupid shit. _I'm sorry. I didn't mean to hurt you, I wish you trusted me more._ _I'm still in love with you._

Sometimes Shepard thinks that it's over. But sometimes Ash smiles at her and her chest hurts, and despite everything Shepard _hopes_ , damn it.

 

**6\. Different**

“We’re friends, right?”

The air always feels heavy when it's just the two of them in the room, like gravity is trying to pull them together, like a moon and a planet. Shepard still isn't sure how she's ended back in orbit with this woman. Alone in a darkened room, the stars blurring outside the window and the taste of fernet on her tongue.

Friends. They'd never been just friends. She's not sure she knows how to be friends with Ashley Williams. How to not want her.

Between them is the ghost of a gun.

She forces a smile. "Yeah."

 

** 7\. Regret **

There's an unloaded pistol in her pocket. They're not that difficult to get on this colony - not when there's the constant threat from the blue sky. It's heavy as a brick in her pocket and the shape of it is strangely alien.

The white marble headstones are like rows of teeth. His name is printed on one, still fresh with black paint. That's how you tell the new graves before you even look at the dates.

His wife has left red flowers because she likes the contrast. Shepard leaves nothing. He gave her everything - only living will ever repay that.

 

**8\. Expectation**

Hannah's fingers are cool against the skin of her collarbone as she fastens the little gold bars to Shepard's collar. _Butter bars._ She'd made as many jokes about those as her friends had - but her mouth hurts from smiling so much.

"I'm proud of you," Hannah murmurs lowly, her eyes touching on the bars and then her daughter's face. "I think I don't tell you that enough. I've always been proud of you."

"Even..." the words die in her mouth. Even when she'd thrown away the acceptance letter from SANA, signed on the dotted line?

Hannah smiles, eyes sad. "Always."

 

** 9\. Refuge **

There’s a part of Shepard that stands in the portside viewing deck and thinks _waste._

Garrus flares his mandibles, peering at his cards and Shepard knows his game. The confused alien act doesn’t work when she knows full well that Nick (dead four years) had taught him how to play on the SR1.

“Don’t let him fool you,” she leans forward to warn Vega “he’s just trying to take your stuff.”

“Traitor,” Garrus hums, amused, and for a moment it’s easy to shut up that voice. Sometimes it feels like this - these people - are the only thing holding her upright.

 

** 10\. Stage **

The only thing Emilia Shepard has ever really wanted is to do her job. That’s all any of it has ever been - trying to do the right thing and having it blow up in her face in new and exciting ways. After Elysium they do their best to scrub away all her sharp edges. Don’t get too drunk, don’t get in bar fights, don’t swear, don’t make jokes about killing people.

In front of the cameras she smiles and keeps her dress uniform sharp, free of loose threads. Hackett tells her to provide hope. She’s always been a liar anyway.


	2. Shay Shepard - Hanged Man

**1\. Bullet**

A death is a sum of its parts: shooter, bullet, target. He's on his stomach, stock to his cheek, reticle resting above a batarian’s head. He knows his name and his face and nothing more.

He breathes in, holds, finger a caress on the trigger. The stock jumps against his shoulder, and five seconds later, a bullet cuts a man down halfway through a sentence.

Two Marines rise to their feet and fade into the jungle like smoke caught by the wind.

A death is a sum of its parts. Shay Shepard is the man that puts them all together.

 

**2\. Safe**

If there's anything Mindoir teaches him it's not soil composition or seasons or the thick, acrid stench of burning sugar cane. It's this: safety is a word without meaning. He carries this knowledge with him like a shield, and if he's called paranoid or cold-hearted, well-

He survived for a reason. A purpose.

The  _ Normandy  _ isn't safer than anywhere else. Alchera was hard proof. But Kaidan's head is resting on his bare chest and he can hear him breathing, deep and even.

Their lives are dangerous. He could lose Kaidan at any moment, any day, on any battlefield.

And still.

 

** 3\. Level **

Shay Shepard would never admit it, but sometimes he looks at Kaidan and wonders exactly why he likes him so much. Why he handed his heart right over, as soon as Kaidan asked for it in his own careful way. After all the flung words and pointed guns, when they're so different.

Kaidan is steady and stubborn and he's so bloody determined to be  _ good  _ and not just right. He won't be manipulated and insists they talk things out. He's a lot of things Shepard isn't.

Kaidan hadn't 'fixed' him, but he'd challenged him, made him  _ want  _ to be better.

 

**4\. Black Sheep**

"We're the black sheep of the family, son," Henry Shepard tells his son, his hands black with grease as he fights with one of the farming drones. Mindoir's sun is very yellow and beats down on them. The Shepards are soldiers, but that life left Henry cold, wore him down to the worst parts of himself.

So he came out here, married a farmer. Smiles at his sister when she calls, sharp-edged in her blue and white uniform. It's best this way.

Years later his son will stand over a row of shiny black body bags and think he understands.

 

** 5\. Alarm **

When they were trying to be funny, some sailors called Arcturus 'the Black Hole' because of the way it swallowed careers - unless you had a couple of stars on your collar.

He doesn't have stars. He cools his heels and drinks his way through the station's vodka stocks. Tries to figure out what exactly he's supposed to do now. They won't court martial him, but the 103rd will never take him back. Not now. Not after Major Kyle and so many funerals.

When he couldn't be a farmer he picked up a gun. Now, his hands feel too fucking empty.

 

**6\. Coffee**

"Sir."

He's only a third of the way through his paperwork when Lieutenant Alenko pokes his head in, carrying two steaming mugs. Shepard doesn't care to admit how surprised he is. Alenko is 'infuriatingly nice' in the words of their pilot, but the crew has been understandably wary of their new executive officer.

"Thought you might need this." He hands the mug over. His fingertips are calloused when they brush Shepard's. If Shepard let himself, he might think that Alenko is a handsome man.

"Appreciate it." But Shepard is the ship's XO and Alenko is his subordinate, so he doesn't.

 

** 7\. Sky **

Shepard's uniform is all creased and there's a beer stain on the jacket he's trying to hide with a strategically placed hand - if his grandmother saw that he was meeting a three star admiral like this she'd probably disown him on the spot. 

Dry-cleaning just hadn't seemed important. Not after the whole ' _ Sol will have burnt out before I see you back in this division, Lieutenant!'  _ thing.

But Admiral Hackett looks at him with eyes as blue as the sky and as coldly sharp as a knife. "The batarians have started retreating from the Traverse. Want to finish the job?"

 

** 8\. Fall **

He finds Kaidan - and Shepard wants to think of him as  _ Lieutenant Alenko  _ because maybe it'd all hurt less if he could, but he can't - on his knees in the garage in front of Ash's open locker. His eyes are red but dry.

Shepard wants to match his devastation. Ash deserves that much. She's another young woman gone far too soon - and there's nothing glorious about that, no matter how many medals they give her grieving mother. She'd been his  _ friend _ .

But he's sent so many young, brave Marines to their deaths. He’s all empty.

Kaidan hands him her tags.

 

** 9\. Aftermath **

‘After’ is a constant cascade of debriefings and meetings and interrogations. The facts are clear in Shepard’s mind - the mission succeeded and a lot of people are dead because of him. Kyle’s voice is a shriek in his head. 

His grandmother comes to visit, and he thinks she might shout.  _ What have you  _ **_done?_ ** But instead she sighs, presses her fingers to the back of his hand. This woman who has lost a son and too many grandchildren.

“Oh Shay. Did you have to kill the prisoners too?”

He doesn’t apologise. He curls his fingers around hers and hangs on. 

 

** 10\. Family **

The music is loud, the conversation and laughter louder. Shepard knows a bit about family, more about loss but right now? All this? It feels like a time capsule, time robbed right from under the nose of the War.

He'll take it.

The people he loves, all the people who see the flawed human under the uniform and laugh at his shitty dancing - all here.

Kaidan collapses on the couch beside him, breathless and grinning, and he's warm wherever they're touching. The kind of warm that makes Shepard wish they were alone.

He wants to exist in this moment forever.


	3. Ashley Williams - Survivor

**1\. Family**

The last memory Ashley has of her father is like this: the late afternoon sun on Amaterasu sinking, the orange light soaking into the dark blue of his uniform. There's grey in his hair and she's a grown woman, but for a moment she feels twelve years old again, waving his ship goodbye. He's always had a way of making her feel like a kid, but now that doesn't make her angry. 

She's heard that part of growing up is realizing your parents are flawed. She's just learnt how to forgive. 

He picks up his seabag. They hug. Make plans. 

 

**2\. Triumph**

When she comes home from the war, her entire family and all their friends are waiting - a riot of noise and laughter and questions. After a week of no one's company but Shepard's she wants to flinch away.

Instead she pastes on the easy smile they're expecting of her, lets her mother touch the new bars on her collar, run her fingers along the Navy Cross ribbon. She's a hero, or something. She locks everything else behind her teeth. They don't want to hear about Eden Prime. There's nothing heroic about running away and monsters wearing your friend's faces.

 

**3\. Reunion**

The cold corridors of the Alliance's Earth Headquarters isn't the sort of place you should see someone you love for the first time in six months. It isn't the sort of place where you ask forgiveness or demand answers.

Say: they said tell only the truth and I did, but it still feels like a betrayal.

Shepard's eyes meet hers, wary like a cornered animal. Ash manages a smile. Betrayed, betraying. Maybe they should be cutting themselves free of each other. Something in her just can't.

"It's good to see you," Shepard says, but that old familiar smile is gone.

 

** 4\. Routine **

At 0600 hours Staff Sergeant Ashley Williams and Sergeant Penny Neal, Systems Alliance Marines, go for a run. They run the perimeter of the base in Constant City, ducking under the shadows of the arcologies. Nothing ever happens here. Everything grinds to the rhythm of habit. 

Penny is quick on her feet and quick with her wit. Their friendship isn't a bad routine. They don't talk about Ashley's last name or why Penny got busted to sergeant. They run, after Penny's bad dreams and after Ash has argued with the First Sergeant. 

It can't be anything more, but it's nice. 

 

**5\. Runaway**

When Ash is sixteen, her father comes back from the Traverse, weary and older than she'd remembered. Predictably, they argue. Later, she can't even remember what it was about - just threatening to leave. He threatens to pack her bags.

She does leave - for a few hours, taking her frustrations out on the trees out the back of the house.

It's dark when she creeps back into the house - but her dad is waiting up, a real paper book in his calloused hands. "Got it on Elysium. It's Tennyson."

She reads it to him until she falls asleep. 

 

**6\. Ocean**

After the funeral, after Hannah Shepard tracks her down, hung over as all hell, Ash stands on the beach below Shepard's house, sea breeze cold on her face. Part of her had thought this might be home. Her, a colony kid and Shepard, a spacer putting down roots. 

Her fingers curl around the sharp edges of the single dog tag Hannah had given her. 

_She must've loved you a lot._ She's never quite understood why love has to be past tense when someone dies, like it's past its expiry date, like all that love gets buried right along with them. 

 

**7\. Chills**

"Hey, Boss." Jaz has that sly smirk on his face that tells Ash straight away that he's up to no good. 

She stares at him from the edge of the lake, eyes narrowed. It's the fifth planet they've stopped on to track geth and/or Prothean objects and damnit, she'd just been glad she could take her helmet off on this one.

"Don't even fucking think about it, Jaz." 

Predictably, someone shoves her right in. The water is cold, cold as it floods in her armour. When she surfaces, spluttering, Kaidan is grinning at her from the bank. 

"Water nice, Sarn't?" 

 

**8\. Letter**

While home on Amaterasu Ash tries to write the cliche letters to the families of the 2/12. Your son was brave. The words are all wrong.

There's a memorial ceremony, of course. Ash hates every moment of it, of course. Afterwards a woman with Penny Neal's eyes wants to talk to her, and God, she looks so like her daughter. 

 

"I crawled over your daughter's corpse and ran away." It's a day for brutal honesty, she decides. She doesn't want this woman's forgiveness.

 

She gets it anyway. A tight, bruising hug, tears, and - 

"I'm glad you're still here, Lieutenant."

 

**9\. Forgiveness**

The whole galaxy is going to hell, but maybe - maybe there's something that can go right. Maybe that something is Ash's hands on Shepard's hips, Shepard's hands in her hair. The press Shepard's smile against her lips. Familiar, unfamiliar. Coming home after too long away. 

There's not going to be any more apologies. They promised. They've bruised each other. They've pointed guns at each other, fingers balanced on triggers.

"I forgive you," Ash murmurs into the kiss.

Shepard smiles again. "I forgive you too." 

They might not be able to wipe the slate clean, but she'll take it anyway. 

 

**10\. Worship**

Ashley believes because she has to. She sees the galaxy unfold around her, full of beauty and full of terror and she has to. The Reapers - well, maybe they're harder to reconcile with the God she knows. 

But Shepard is alive, and while she hates to equate anything Cerberus has done to an act of God, it's still a miracle. They've got a chance. That's a miracle too. 

Shepard doesn't believe in much anymore. Not in God, not in victory, not in anything but the Normandy and crew. It's okay. Ashley will be believer enough for both of them.


End file.
